Greg Sargent notices what many in the Democratic Party’s entrenched establishment are doing their best to ignore. People like DWS.
Democrats badly underestimated Bernie Sanders. That was a very serious mistake.
But whatever happens in Iowa, we can already reach this conclusion: Democrats, and Hillary Clinton, will have to engage in a serious, genuine effort to learn from the Sanders phenomenon and what it really represents.
NBC’s Kasie Hunt has a terrific segment this morning on the surprise success of Sanders’s campaign that should be a must-watch for all Democrats. It shows a range of pundits last spring mocking Sanders’s socialism, his “thick Brooklyn accent,” his age (“he looks 91″), and his manner (“he’s a loon”). But then Hunt’s segment smartly shows footage of the roaring crowds at Sanders rallies, and the deep passion and commitment of the young volunteers putting in long hours in a Sanders Iowa campaign office, concluding: “If Bernie Sanders is going to beat Hillary Clinton in Iowa, it’s because of volunteers like these, who basically live here.”
The Sanders phenomenon raises possible warning signs for Clinton’s chances in a general election. His ability to engage, excite and involve younger voters — his ability to make them feel invested in politics — throws into sharp relief Clinton’s relative failure, at least for now, to do the same.
Sanders has figured out a way to speak to a sense that the system is fundamentally broken in very profound ways that put our future in doubt. Those two things may be related: Sanders appears to make young voters feel they have a stake in his candidacy — and by extension, in this election — because they think their future is the one that’s in doubt. By speaking in bold strokes about the need for gargantuan solutions, he seems to makes their deep concerns about the future feel heard and, perhaps, assuaged.
It's a fact that all Mankind’s future may potentially be in doubt. That’s what the best science is telling us now. That’s why Bernie’s candidacy is so important to many younger voters, as well as a lot of older voters like myself. What is Hillary proposing to address our most urgent dilemma we as a nation face, NOT ISIS but Climate Change? Hillary’s campaign has yet to present it’s long promised, “comprehensive energy and climate agenda” with just days to go before the Iowa Caucus. That absence of a robust and comprehensive plan to keep this planet capable of sustaining human civilizations, demonstrates that isn’t an urgent priority for Hillary’s campaign.
Incrementalism won’t save us from ourselves this time.